I am really impressed with the ease of making "slide show" VCDs using the above software. Just throw in all your jpegs, set the duration per frame & other preferences (eg borders for the pictures)and record using the CD writer. The resolution is really quite good even on a 34'' TV (Panasonic 100Hz digital TV). I have tried many other ways of doing this but there is nothing easier. I have one problem though. I have not been able to introduce the background music (as wave or mp3). Can any one help please ?

-- Steve MF Lai (stevelai@magix.com.sg), May 07, 2001

Answers

My own method is to use my preferred Video editing app - Video Vegas - to make a VCD compliant MPEG-1 and then burn that using Roxio ECD.

Video-Vegas allows one to set a default length for added stills, and will auto-dissolve between them. Adding audio is a snap.

I'd guess that many other video editing apps operate much the same way.

In the latest version of Roxio ECD 'platinum' there is a new feature - 'VideoImpression' which appears to do much the same thing, with video clips as well as stills, but I haven't messed with it as yet. individual

-- WWWhatsup (joly@dti.net), May 07, 2001.

Converting the string of stills with audio to a compliant VCD MPEG-1 track is always the easy thing to do but this necessarily limits us all to a resolution of 352x240 or 352x288. If the stills remain stills and are encoded as such and become itemxxxx.dat files in the SEGMENT directory we then are allowed full resolution of 704x480 or 704x576, that's why they look good on a 34" TV as Steve says. This, with accompanying audio, is a feature of the White Book spec set that doesn't seem easy to implement judging from the kvetchy way it is handled in some authoring s/w. For example, one of the bugs in VideoPack is on playing back such stills with audio the latter is distorted. I don't know how WinOnCD and Platinum handles this; please note: we want TO RETAIN the full-res of 704x480/576 before anyone yet again suggests making a quarter-res VCD-compliant track.

-- Mehmet Tekdemir (turk690@yahoo.com), May 08, 2001.

Thanks for the responses fr WWWhatsup & Mehmet. I am beginning to understand the problem. There were 2 earlier queries that indicated that the incorporation of wave tracks led to problems - on playback there was generally poor sound quality. I will have to check this out for myself.

Incidentally, the WinOnCD 3.8 has at least 20 choices of transitions and the duration of display of slides can also be controlled.

I also purchased the PictureToExe software recently. This is also a wonderful little programme that does auto slides which can be attached onto emails. The recipient only needs to double click the attachment and out rolls the auto slide show - with jpegs, text & sound.

The wonderful & frustrating world of IT all in one !!!

-- Steve MF Lai (stevelai@magix.com.sg), May 08, 2001.

version 3.8 of winoncd has a good performance in cd writing and it also has good features in cd writing

-- Alok trivedi (aloktrivedi2004@yahoo.co.in`), March 18, 2004.